T. Mai-Phuong Nguyen

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Duc H. Nguyen follows the stories of Vietnamese refugees who have been living in a condition of statelessness in the Philippines for 16 years while awaiting a rare opportunity for resettlement in the United States.

Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, hundreds of thousands refugees took the perilous escape route across South China Sea to find freedom. Many died of drowning or starvation and thirst. Others were lost at sea, or robbed and killed by pirates. More than 30 years later, no major film or television program has told their stories. Bolinao 52 presents this long-silenced voice, an unspoken legacy of the Vietnam War. Filmmaker Duc Nguyen, also a boat refugee, retraces the odyssey of Bolinao 52 – a vessel adrift on the sea for 37 days—and a survivor Tung Trinh as she returns to her past to tell her story.